Good afternoon, everybody.
I want to thank Secretary Johnson, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas, and the
dedicated public servants of the Department of Homeland Security for
welcoming me here today. I’ve kind of taken over your work space. I
apologize for that, but just pretend that I’m not here. I want you
to keep working. I did ask who dressed up for this event, and
apparently, a few were brave enough to admit it.

But in advance of my State
of the Union address next week, I’ve been rolling out my proposals for
keeping our economy on track, keeping it growing, making sure we're
creating jobs and opportunity for the American people. And that
includes the extraordinary opportunities that exist in our digital
economy.

Yesterday, I announced new
proposals to better protect Americans from identity theft and to ensure
our privacy, including making sure that our kids are safe from digital
marketing and intrusions on their privacy based on what they’re doing at
school. Tomorrow in Iowa, I’ll talk about how we can give more families
and communities faster, cheaper access to the broadband that allows them
to successfully compete in this global economy. And on Thursday, the
Vice President will be in Norfolk to highlight the need to continue to
invest in the education and skills for our cybersecurity professionals.
But today I am here at DHS to highlight how we can work with the private
sector to better protect American companies against cyber threats.

Shortly after I took office,
I declared that cyber threats pose an enormous challenge for our
country. It's one of the most serious economic and national security
challenges we face as a nation. Foreign governments, criminals and
hackers probe America’s computer networks every single day. We saw that
again with the attack at Sony, which actually destroyed data and
computer hardware that is going to be very costly for that company to
clean up. Just yesterday, we saw the hack of a military Twitter account
and You Tube channel. No military operations were impacted. So far, it
appears that no classified information was released. But the
investigation is ongoing, and it’s a reminder that cyber threats are an
urgent and growing danger.

Moreover, much of our
critical infrastructure -- our financial systems, power grids,
pipelines, health care systems --run on networks connected to the
Internet. So this is a matter of public safety and of public health.
And most of this infrastructure is owned and operated by the private
sector. So neither government, nor the private sector can defend the
nation alone. It’s going to have to be a shared mission -- government
and industry working hand in hand, as partners.

And that’s why I’ve said
that protecting our digital infrastructure is a national security
priority and a national economic priority. Over the past six years,
we’ve pursued a comprehensive strategy, boosting our defenses in
government, sharing more information with the private sector to help
them defend themselves, working with industry through what we call the
Cybersecurity Framework not just to respond to threats and recover from
attacks but to prevent and disrupt them in the first place.

And that’s where these good
folks come in. We are currently at the National Cybersecurity
Communications Integration Center -- also known as NCCIC. I just got a
tour and a briefing. I want to thank everybody here, not just from DHS
but from across government and the private sector, because, again, this
is a shared responsibility.

This center is one of the
critical lines of America’s cyber defenses. These men and women work
around the clock, 24/7, monitoring threats, issuing warnings, sharing
information with the private sector, and keeping Americans safe. So, as
a nation, we owe them thanks, and as a nation, we are making progress.
We’re more prepared to defend against cyber attacks. But every day, our
adversaries are getting more sophisticated and more determined, and more
plentiful. So every day, we’ve got to keep upping our game at the same
time. We’ve got to stay ahead of those who are trying to do us harm.

The problem is that
government and the private sector are still not always working as
closely together as we should. Sometimes it’s still too hard for
government to share threat information with companies. Sometimes it’s
still too hard for companies to share information about cyber threats
with the government. There are legal issues involved and liability
issues. Sometimes, companies are reluctant to reveal their
vulnerabilities or admit publicly that they have been hacked. At the
same time, the American people have a legitimate interest in making sure
that government is not potentially abusing information that it's
received from the private sector.

So all of us -- government
and industry -- are going to have to keep doing better. The new
legislation and proposals I put forward yesterday will help, especially
for a strong, single national standard for notifying Americans when
their information has been breached. Today, I want to announce some
additional steps.

First, we’re proposing new
cybersecurity legislation to promote the greater information sharing we
need between government and the private sector. This builds and
improves upon legislation that we’ve put forward in the past. It
reflects years of extensive discussions with industry. It includes
liability protections for companies that share information on cyber
threats. It includes essential safeguards to ensure that government
protects privacy and civil liberties even as we're doing our job of
safeguarding America’s critical information networks.

I raised this issue again
and the need for this legislation with congressional leaders this
morning, including Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell, and we all
agree that this is a threat that has to be addressed, and I am confident
that we should be able to craft bipartisan legislation soon to put these
systems in place. We’re going to keep on working with Congress to get
this done. And in the meantime, we’re going to do everything we can
with our existing authorities to make sure industry gets the information
it needs to better defend itself.

Second, we’re proposing to
update the authorities that law enforcement uses to go after cyber
criminals. We want to be able to better prosecute those who are
involved in cyber attacks, those who are involved in the sale of cyber
weapons like botnets and spyware. We want to ensure that we’re able to
prosecute insiders who steal corporate secrets or individuals’ private
information. And we want to expand the authority of courts to shut down
botnets and other malware. The bottom line, we want cyber criminals to
feel the full force of American justice, because they are doing as much
damage, if not more, these days as folks who are involved in more
conventional crime.

Finally, and since this is a
challenge that we can only meet together, I’m announcing that next month
we’ll convene a White House summit on cybersecurity and consumer
protection. It’s a White House summit where we're not going to do it at
the White House; we're going to go to Stanford University. And it’s
going to bring everybody together -- industry, tech companies, law
enforcement, consumer and privacy advocates, law professors who are
specialists in the field, as well as students -- to make sure that we
work through these issues in a public, transparent fashion.

Because they’re hard and
they’re complicated issues. But if we keep on working on them together,
and focus on concrete and pragmatic steps that we can take to boost our
cybersecurity and our privacy, I'm confident that both our privacy will
be more secure and our information, our networks, public health, public
safety will be more secure. We’re going to keep on at this as a
government, but we're also going to be working with the private sector
to detect, prevent, defend, deter against attacks, and to recover
quickly from any disruptions or damage. And as long as I’m President,
protecting America’s digital infrastructure is going to remain a top
national security priority.

In closing, I want to say
one of the areas I’ll be working with Congress is to ensure that we
don’t let any disagreements keep us from fulfilling our most basic
responsibilities. Last week’s attack in Paris was a painful reminder
that we have no greater duty than the security of the American people.
And our national security should never be subject to partisan political
games. Congress needs to fully fund our Department of Homeland
Security, without delay, so that the dedicated public servants working
here can operate with the certainty and confidence they need to keep the
American people safe. And that's true across the board in the
Department of Homeland Security.

So, again, I want to thank
Jeh and Deputy Secretary Mayorkas, and everybody here at NCCIC and DHS
for the great job you are doing. You are helping to keep the nation
safe and secure.

And with that, we're going
to get out of here so you can get back to work. Who knows what’s been
happening while you’ve been paying attention to me? All right?